Friday 25 July 2008 19.01 EDT
First published on Friday 25 July 2008 19.01 EDT

A week ago British athletics lost its man for the great one-liners when the decathlete Dean Macey retired but the sport has not waited long to find a replacement in the comedy stakes.

Chris Tomlinson wanders in with a shorter-than-normal haircut, trademark stubble and telling a story about a promise he made to the prime minister that he would be smarter the next time they met. He then recalls his encounter with Gordon Brown. "A car picked me up at 5.45am and I was like, whatever," says the British long jumper. "I didn't brush my hair but I think I did brush my teeth. It was 7.30am and I found myself stood next to Gordon Brown, thinking 'what's going on here, normally I am still in bed'. I will be clean shaven if I win a medal."

A post-Olympic Games celebration party at No10 is not something that Tomlinson thinks about too often, but there would probably be no more popular member of the British athletics team walking through Downing Street if that happens.

There are no sides to this Middlesbrough-born field eventer who lives in upmarket Hampstead in north London with his wife of two months, the West End actress Lucia Rovardi.

"I live in the smallest ex-council flat in the world," says the 26-year-old. "You couldn't swing a kitten in there, let alone a cat. But I am not into all the celebrity life. I have seen Ricky Gervais. For me to recognise them they have to be A-list celebrities. I saw Russell Brand too. I think they think I am just the tall guy with a shitzu. I'm sure they think I'm gay.

"For me [the celebrity life] never really appealed. I train hard at the track and spend time with my family. We don't go to showbiz parties. I was once asked who my ideal dinner guests would be. The answer was family and friends. That's it. Boring really.

"In this day and age if you want to be a celebrity you can be a celebrity. Take Big Brother. I have no respect for them. On radio the other day they were quoting some slapper from Big Brother and they put her in the same sentence as Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party - a guy who has achieved so much in life, fighting apartheid, spending 30 years in jail and who did so much for South Africa.

"You do what you want with an Olympic gold. You can be a great footballer and live life through the newspapers or you can be Paul Scholes. Do you want to be on the front pages or the back pages? It's not why I do the sport. I just want to fulfil my potential and walk away from sport thinking I had given it my all."

And there we have it: potential. It is more than six years since Tomlinson broke the British long jump record when his leap of 8.27m in Florida ended the 34-year reign of Lynn Davies.

He increased it by two centimetres at a meeting in Germany a year ago but when he won silver at the World Indoor Championships in Valencia in March, it was the first time he had made the podium. Eight months earlier at the outdoor World Championships in Osaka he did not progress past the qualifying stage. The inconsistency explains why anything could happen with Tomlinson in Beijing.

"I believe it is round the corner," he says of his medal-winning potential. "I have done big jumps and think it's getting close."

He will head to the Olympics after competing at the second day of the Aviva London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace this afternoon, but a man whose furthest effort outdoor this year was a wind-assisted 8.09m in June has been given a hint that something is not far away.

At the Olympic trials in Birmingham this month he walked away feeling fairly optimistic even though he had finished fifth with 7.76m. Greg Rutherford, the European silver medallist, won with a jump of 8.20m.

"My performance was not particularly great on the day but I had a few no-jumps in there and in particular one in the region of 8.40m," he says. "It was the biggest jump of my life. I've seen the video and it's given me a lot of confidence in my ability going into Crystal Palace. It was a small no-jump. Some you get, some you don't."

But it has left him knowing that a repeat performance, and this time an inch or two the right side of the take-off strip, could transform his life.

"I have the capability to go out to Beijing and produce distances that can win medals," he says, knowing it would then mean a quick dash for the razor for a date with the PM.